The Prince of Wales was allegedly targeted as a potential investor by agents
working for the alleged fraudster Bernard Madoff's £34 billion Ponzi scheme.

The heir to the throne is named alongside European aristocracy in documents supplied to US prosecutors. He was allegedly approached by Prince Michael of Yugoslavia at a Polo tournament in 2002 which was also attended by Prince William and Prince Harry.

Prince Michael, a distant cousin of Crown Prince Alexander of Yugoslavia, was an investment executive of Access International Advisors, which was a Madoff feeder fund.

But the Prince of Wales declined to become involved with the fund which was run by Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, 65, who was found dead in his New York office in December after potentially losing £1 billion with Madoff who is under house arrest in New York.

The future King was allegedly sounded out by Prince Michael who along with Philippe Junot, the first husband of Princess Caroline of Monaco, used to seek investors on the stamping grounds of the rich from the ski slopes of Switzerland to Monte Carlo and the Mediterranean.

The alleged attempt to involve the Prince of Wales is disclosed in the testimony by the whistle-blower Harry Markopolos in documents prepared for the U S Securities and Exchange Commission. Markopolos told US legislators how he repeatedly tried to inform the Securities and Exchange Commission of Mr Madoff's actions, but was largely ignored.

The documents which name the Prince of Wales were released as part of his testimony to a congressional panel on Feb. 4. "It is my belief that Access likely had several royal families as clients invested in Madoff," Markopolos said. "He was truly masterful in using his feeder funds to draw in people close in make-up to the owners of the feeder funds."

Liliane Bettencourt, 86, who inherited the L'Oréal fortune on the death of her father in 1957 and remains the principal shareholder of the company, lost money after she entrusted part of her

$22.9 billion fortune to Access. Mrs Bettencourt is described in Forbes' 2008 list of the world's richest people as the second-richest person in France and the world's richest woman.

Among British investors named as "customers'' of the alleged fraudster are Lady Rothschild, former wife of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild and a Conservative Party treasurer until 2006, and Lord Jacobs, former owner of BSM and a Tate Gallery donor.

US victims of the suspected fraud including the actors Kevin Bacon and John Malkovich, the film director Steven Spielberg, the Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, CNN's veteran interviewer Larry King, the supermodel Carmen Dell'Orefice, and the estate of late singer-songwriter John Denver. Markopolos, a former chief investment officer for Rampart Investment Management in Boston, tried to replicate Madoff's declared investment strategy and said he found it did not work.

In 2002, the year Prince Michael allegedly approached the Prince of Wales, Access invested about 45 per cent of its $1.2 billion under management with Madoff a former chairman of the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Madoff was charged in December with securities fraud after allegedly confessing to investigators that he had run a huge Ponzi scheme. Mr Madoff has not formally responded to the charge, and is being held under house arrest in his multi-million dollar Manhattan penthouse.